If and then: A critique of speculative nanoethics [Book Review]
NanoEthics 1 (1):31-46 (2007)
Abstract
Most known technology serves to ingeniously adapt the world to the physical and mental limitations of human beings. Humankind has acquired awesome power with its rather limited means. Nanotechnological capabilities further this power. On some accounts, however, nanotechnological research will contribute to a rather different kind of technological development, namely one that changes human beings so as to remove or reduce their physical and mental limitations. The prospect of this technological development has inspired a fair amount of ethical debate. Here, proponents and opponents of such visions of human enhancement are criticized alike for engaging in speculative ethics. This critique exposes a general pattern that extends to other nano-, bio-, or neuroethical debates. While it does not apply to all discussions of “enhancement technologies” it does apply to all ethical discourse that constructs and validates an incredible future which it only then proceeds to endorse or critique. This discourse violates conditions of intelligibility, squanders the scarce and valuable resource of ethical concern, and misleads by casting remote possibilities or philosophical thought-experiments as foresight about likely technical developments. In effect, it deflects consideration from the transformative technologies of the present.Author's Profile
Responsible ethics Imagined futures overwhelm the actual present Technology that adapts the world to limited humans vs. technology as a means to transcend human limits Enhancement effects vs. the enhancement of human capabilities Critiques of the human enhancement discourse Scenario methods Presuppositions vs. long-term consequences of research Identifying potentially transformative research Moving beyond consequentalism and deontology
DOI
10.1007/s11569-007-0007-6
My notes
Similar books and articles
Is Human Enhancement also a Personal Matter?Vincent Menuz, Thierry Hurlimann & Béatrice Godard - 2013 - Science and Engineering Ethics 19 (1):161-177.
Human development or human enhancement? A methodological reflection on capabilities and the evaluation of information technologies.Mark Coeckelbergh - 2011 - Ethics and Information Technology 13 (2):81-92.
From Speculative Nanoethics to Explorative Philosophy of Nanotechnology.Armin Grunwald - 2010 - NanoEthics 4 (2):91-101.
How should we do nanoethics? A network approach for discerning ethical issues in nanotechnology.Ibo van de Poel - 2008 - NanoEthics 2 (1):25-38.
Developments in the debate on nanoethics: Traditional approaches and the need for new kinds of analysis. [REVIEW]Arianna Ferrari - 2010 - NanoEthics 4 (1):27-52.
What’s Different, Ethically, About Nanotechnology?: Foundational Questions and Answers. [REVIEW]Robert E. McGinn - 2010 - NanoEthics 4 (2):115-128.
State neutrality and the ethics of human enhancement technologies.John Basl - 2010 - AJOB 1 (2):41-48.
The opposite of human enhancement: Nanotechnology and the blind chicken problem. [REVIEW]Paul B. Thompson - 2008 - NanoEthics 2 (3):305-316.
Analytics
Added to PP
2009-01-28
Downloads
152 (#84,663)
6 months
3 (#227,001)
2009-01-28
Downloads
152 (#84,663)
6 months
3 (#227,001)
Historical graph of downloads
Author's Profile
Citations of this work
Deflating the “DBS causes personality changes” bubble.Frederic Gilbert, J. N. M. Viaña & C. Ineichen - 2018 - Neuroethics 14 (1):1-17.
Nano-ethics as NEST-ethics: Patterns of moral argumentation about new and emerging science and technology. [REVIEW]Tsjalling Swierstra & Arie Rip - 2007 - NanoEthics 1 (1):3-20.
An Ethical Framework for Evaluating Experimental Technology.Ibo van de Poel - 2016 - Science and Engineering Ethics 22 (3):667-686.
Methods for Practising Ethics in Research and Innovation: A Literature Review, Critical Analysis and Recommendations.Wessel Reijers, David Wright, Philip Brey, Karsten Weber, Rowena Rodrigues, Declan O’Sullivan & Bert Gordijn - 2018 - Science and Engineering Ethics 24 (5):1437-1481.
Visions and Ethics in Current Discourse on Human Enhancement.Arianna Ferrari, Christopher Coenen & Armin Grunwald - 2012 - NanoEthics 6 (3):215-229.
References found in this work
The reversal test: Eliminating status quo bias in applied ethics.Nick Bostrom & Toby Ord - 2006 - Ethics 116 (4):656-679.